I know this dates me, but I still love the Michael York-Richard Chamberlain-Oliver Reed version of The Three Musketeers. When added to its sequel, it's actually fairly faithful to the book, which I also loved.

Mind you, the 90's version with Charlie Sheen, Chris O'Donnell, Oliver Platt and the guy from 24 (I'm blanking on his name) is still enjoyed and quoted in our family and wasn't terribly faithful or a great version but it was better than this!

I love this version - its just cheesy enough. I own the video and can't wait to watch it with Boo

Me too, and we probably should get it on DVD. We could quote that movie till the cows come home! In fact, there's a part in the newer version where the cardinal's guards say "Will you come peacefully or do you intend to resist" and the first thing to pop to my mind is "Oh don't be so stupid, of course we intend to resist, just give us a moment, alright?"

Porthos has always been my favorite. Though when that movie came out I had a pretty serious crush on Chris O'Donnell.

It is a wonderfully quotable movie! "This sash was a gift from the Queen of America."

There's no queen of America!

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Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. You have a right to be here. Be cheerful, strive to be happy. -Desiderata

Mind you, the 90's version with Charlie Sheen, Chris O'Donnell, Oliver Platt and the guy from 24 (I'm blanking on his name) is still enjoyed and quoted in our family and wasn't terribly faithful or a great version but it was better than this!

I love this version - its just cheesy enough. I own the video and can't wait to watch it with Boo

Me too, and we probably should get it on DVD. We could quote that movie till the cows come home! In fact, there's a part in the newer version where the cardinal's guards say "Will you come peacefully or do you intend to resist" and the first thing to pop to my mind is "Oh don't be so stupid, of course we intend to resist, just give us a moment, alright?"

Porthos has always been my favorite. Though when that movie came out I had a pretty serious crush on Chris O'Donnell.

It is a wonderfully quotable movie! "This sash was a gift from the Queen of America."

I know this dates me, but I still love the Michael York-Richard Chamberlain-Oliver Reed version of The Three Musketeers. When added to its sequel, it's actually fairly faithful to the book, which I also loved.

My favorite - the young Michael York's scene where he is trying to hide at the bottom of the horse trough with a reed to breathe through and the "innocent" expression on his face when he is found? Wonderful. And Rachel Welch certainly had a good take on her role - although the guys in the theater were less interested in her acting skills than the way that the period bodice displayed other of her gifts!

There was a made for television movie where he reprised his D'Artagnan role as the father of the first female to try out for the Musketeers (and she was made a guard for the queen) - granted, the original Dumas Fifteen Years Later and Twenty Years Later books seem not to have been consulted and the world view of the actress was far too "modern" for her times - but it was fun to watch him teaching his sword trick(s) to his child before sending the now grown child off to Paris to look up his old friends.

Fun movies don't have to stick to the known canon - that they are playing fast & loose with history, much less sequels by the same author is expected. So I enjoyed the parts I could and ate popcorn when it veered too far into anachronisms that would have gotten someone imprisoned for heresy (at the least). That was long after the Inquisition had passed its peak...but still...no, not likely.

I've learned that my liver is too old to take a sip from an alcoholic beverage every time one of "those" scenes that the writers have consulted market tastes instead of history books before writing - or I'd probably have no liver at all!

I'm in the middle of reading several turn-of-the-century (early 1900s) series books, and am noticing an irritating commonality: in early books, heroine will help some poor unfortunate soul in some important way. In later books, while the deed is mentioned, the actual recipient of the deed usually isn't. So you get these forgotten, interchangeable cyphers as secondary characters. And since they are usually poor or of a minority race, it sends a really screwy message to have them so easily sidelined.

I can't remember if I posted this or not, but I remembered another one while reading a book. Where an author gets lazy by cutting and pasting in whole pages of stuff from previous books in the same series, instead of just summing up the situation.

I received a book in the mail the other day that had the following blurb on its cover: "Lust, butchery, and witchcraft... richly readable." Okay, I'm not actually sure if that's a peeve or not, because I'll have to see what the content is first, but that's really not what I thought the book was going to be about (tone-wise) from the other descriptions I'd read--it's a historical royal romance set during the Wars of the Roses (The King's Grey Mare by Rosemary Hawley Jarmon).

I was thumbing through a book today and came across an engagement ring described as "a sapphire surrounded by diamonds the size of quail eggs." Eeek - what is the size of the thing? I couldn't fit one quail egg on my finger, much less several of them around a sapphire.

So I started reading a new book the other night. It looks really interesting, and as much as my mom and grandma have raved about it, I really want to read it.

The problem is the narration style. In the first half page of the book, it goes back and forth four times, and it doesn't get much better from there.

It's The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. Has anyone here read it? Does the style even out a bit further into the book? I'm only a few pages in, and if it doesn't get better, I'm going to have to return it to the family library, I can't handle that.

I was thumbing through a book today and came across an engagement ring described as "a sapphire surrounded by diamonds the size of quail eggs." Eeek - what is the size of the thing? I couldn't fit one quail egg on my finger, much less several of them around a sapphire.

There's a fairy tale I read when I was small--either Grimm or Anderson--about a man who gets three hellhounds to be his loyal servants, and they basically grant wishes. But to make them sound scary, they are described as having huge, glaring eyes. Unfortunately, it always made me laugh at how ridiculous it was. One had eyes the size of teacups, the next had eyes the size of large plates, and the last had eyes the size of windmills. It totally ruined the scary atmosphere the author was trying to create, and made me laugh my socks off as a kid.

Similarly, when people describe jewelry like this, I always think, "How ridiculous!" instead of the intended, "How beautiful/expensive!" Even if the ring had only three quail egg-sized diamonds, that already makes it the size of a child's fist. You'd look like an idiot.

So I started reading a new book the other night. It looks really interesting, and as much as my mom and grandma have raved about it, I really want to read it.

The problem is the narration style. In the first half page of the book, it goes back and forth four times, and it doesn't get much better from there.

It's The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. Has anyone here read it? Does the style even out a bit further into the book? I'm only a few pages in, and if it doesn't get better, I'm going to have to return it to the family library, I can't handle that.

My daughter read it. It's on my list. She's a voracious reader, but I noticed this one took her a little longer to get through.

There's a fairy tale I read when I was small--either Grimm or Anderson--about a man who gets three hellhounds to be his loyal servants, and they basically grant wishes. But to make them sound scary, they are described as having huge, glaring eyes. Unfortunately, it always made me laugh at how ridiculous it was. One had eyes the size of teacups, the next had eyes the size of large plates, and the last had eyes the size of windmills. It totally ruined the scary atmosphere the author was trying to create, and made me laugh my socks off as a kid.

Does it make it better if I mention the oldest fairy tales book I have makes it plain these are proportionate to the size of each dog? The illustrations gave me nightmares as a child.

I just put down a recent read. Poor editing is a real annoyance: the character walked into the room and sat down. Then they sat down with their teacup. Then they sat down to dinner. All in the space of three lines without ever standing up?

Also, a classic case of did not do the research: someone driving from Heathrow to Bournemouth in half an hour at 5:30 on a Friday. I don't care how much of a rush he's in, 98 miles in 30 minutes in gridlock in a taxi breaks the laws of physics, not just the road. Just to make things worse, Bournemouth has its own airport with regular flights directly from the location he was flying in from! (Yes, the author was British.)

There's a fairy tale I read when I was small--either Grimm or Anderson--about a man who gets three hellhounds to be his loyal servants, and they basically grant wishes. But to make them sound scary, they are described as having huge, glaring eyes. Unfortunately, it always made me laugh at how ridiculous it was. One had eyes the size of teacups, the next had eyes the size of large plates, and the last had eyes the size of windmills. It totally ruined the scary atmosphere the author was trying to create, and made me laugh my socks off as a kid.

Does it make it better if I mention the oldest fairy tales book I have makes it plain these are proportionate to the size of each dog? The illustrations gave me nightmares as a child.

This reminds me of a peeve about fairytales. Where the jerk is written as the hero of the story and we are suppose to root for him/her.

There's a fairy tale I read when I was small--either Grimm or Anderson--about a man who gets three hellhounds to be his loyal servants, and they basically grant wishes. But to make them sound scary, they are described as having huge, glaring eyes. Unfortunately, it always made me laugh at how ridiculous it was. One had eyes the size of teacups, the next had eyes the size of large plates, and the last had eyes the size of windmills. It totally ruined the scary atmosphere the author was trying to create, and made me laugh my socks off as a kid.

Does it make it better if I mention the oldest fairy tales book I have makes it plain these are proportionate to the size of each dog? The illustrations gave me nightmares as a child.

This reminds me of a peeve about fairytales. Where the jerk is written as the hero of the story and we are suppose to root for him/her.

Yes! Jack and the Beanstalk in particular. Jack was a thief, no two ways about it. The later forms of the tale say that the gold/goose/harp were the property of Jack's father and the giant stole them first, but the early versions say nothing of that.

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~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~It's true. Money can't buy happiness. You have to turn it into books first. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~